Real estate investment in 2026: private debt, hospitality, and an off-market approach

Côme Real Estate — June 2026

A market that has changed its rules

The real estate investment equation was long a simple one: an asset, a bank loan, a return. Monetary tightening over recent years has broken that equilibrium. Rates have restructured valuations, credit has become scarce across entire segments of the market, and the demand for real return — net of inflation, net of tax — has become the true selection criterion.

Against this backdrop, mass-market offerings have shown their limits. SCPIs, long presented as the universal gateway to real estate, have recorded falling unit values, constrained liquidity, and eroded returns. This is not a passing setback — it is the structural consequence of passive exposure to assets investors do not control, and for which they choose neither the operator nor the exit timeline.

Private investors navigating this environment well are those who have chosen selectivity: direct access to identified assets, disciplined structuring, and verifiable alignment of interests.

Côme Real Estate: a real estate merchant bank built into the Maison

Côme Real Estate is the real estate merchant bank of Côme Maison of Finance. It originates and structures private debt and equity club deal transactions, always off-market. Its purpose is twofold: giving Côme’s clients access to opportunities the open market does not distribute, and supporting leading real estate operators in structuring their financing.

What fundamentally sets this approach apart: real estate is never considered in isolation at Côme. Each transaction is built into the client’s overall wealth architecture — in coordination with the Maison’s wealth engineering, private asset management, and tax advisory teams. The family officer who knows a client’s full situation — transmission objectives, tax position, liquidity profile, allocation between listed and unlisted assets — is involved in every directional decision. This is not a real estate product offering. It is a wealth conviction, built for each individual trajectory.

Our operational approach

Off-market origination

Access to the best opportunities is the first barrier to entry in selective real estate. Côme Real Estate draws on networks of operators, owners, and advisors built over time, giving access to assets before they reach the open market.

Structuring tailored to each transaction

Every project is different. We deploy whichever capital structure suits the situation best: equity, preferred equity, mezzanine debt, senior debt, unitranche debt. Structuring is not an afterthought to the opportunity — it is its framework. It determines the net return the investor actually receives, and we systematically bring our best internal and external resources to bear on it.

Alignment of interests

Our clients invest alongside Côme Maison of Finance. This alignment is not a formula: it is the founding principle of our club deals, ensuring the interests of the Maison and those of its clients are structurally identical.

Open architecture

We work with the full range of real estate operators, with no captive flow and no conflict of interest. Partner selection is independent and rigorous.

Two investment convictions

Private real estate debt: capturing the disintermediation premium

Why this segment is structurally attractive

The partial withdrawal of banks from certain segments of real estate financing is often seen as a market risk. It is also an opportunity — for those who know where to position themselves.

This withdrawal is not cyclical. It results from durable regulatory constraints — capital ratios, Basel IV, provisioning requirements — that have structurally reshaped banks’ appetite for certain categories of transactions. Disintermediation has been underway for several years, and it is creating space that private lenders can occupy at an attractive risk premium.

For the private investor lending directly — against an identified asset, with quality collateral, to a selected operator — the available premium today makes it possible to target returns historically associated with equity, from a more protected position in the capital structure. What disintermediation once made largely inaccessible is becoming, for those who operate with rigor, one of the best risk/return profiles available across real assets.

Key takeaway: Private real estate debt does not replace equity — it balances it. It offers tangible collateral, return visibility, and a repayment priority that equity cannot guarantee.

European hospitality: structural drivers, not cyclical ones

Why France holds a singular position

France is the world’s leading tourist destination. That raw fact reflects a market reality that has shifted profoundly. Demand has surpassed pre-crisis levels and is transforming in depth: longer stays, the rise of bleisure and experiential travel, and premium demand concentrating in supply-constrained markets.

Regulation of short-term rentals in major cities — Paris, Nice, Lyon, Bordeaux — is structurally reducing alternative supply and redirecting a growing share of demand toward structured hospitality. Hotel assets pass through inflation in near real time, through a capacity for daily rate adjustment that conventional commercial leases do not offer. The asset remains legible — everyone experiences it directly as a guest — and produces precise, auditable operational data.

Our operational approach to this segment

Our conviction on hospitality rests on a genuine in-house competency: detailed knowledge of the European hotel market, hotel asset management independent of the operator, and the ability to structure value-add or opportunistic transactions with the strongest operating partners.

Investing in hospitality means acquiring, renovating, repositioning, or restructuring an asset to create value, then exiting within a defined timeframe. This approach only makes sense when backed by real operational expertise: the chosen operator must be well established in its market, with a verifiable track record — the first line of protection for the investment.

The club deal format extends this logic: genuine co-ownership of an identified asset, sourced off-market, with an exit strategy defined from the outset. The opposite of an anonymous collective vehicle, where the investor has no say over the asset, the manager, or the timeline.

Key takeaway: Hospitality combines operational legibility (everyone experiences it directly as a guest), continuous rate adjustment, and real-time performance documentation — three qualities rare across real assets.

Our track record — seven months of activity

In seven months, Côme Real Estate has deployed its approach across three fronts simultaneously:

• Ultra-luxury property trading — transactions in Paris’s finest neighborhoods
• Institutional private debt — financing provided to institutional value-add funds, on repositioning assets
• Active hospitality strategy — two hotels already acquired (Paris and Nice), three acquisitions underway

This simultaneous deployment across multiple segments illustrates the multi-asset, multi-structure logic at the heart of our approach: each segment responds to a different conviction, each structuring reflects a specific wealth situation.

Our perspective

In a market where credit is becoming scarce, value no longer lies in maximum exposure — it lies in maximum selectivity. Identifying the right assets, the right operators, and the right structuring requires a precise reading of the market, a constant presence within the ecosystem, and a precise understanding of each investor’s wealth objectives.

What sets Côme Real Estate apart is its ability to combine this sector expertise with the overall wealth vision each client builds with their Maison. This is not real estate as a portfolio line. It is real estate built for a trajectory.

Côme Real Estate is the real estate merchant bank of Côme Maison of Finance. It operates in private debt, equity club deals, and operator financing, always off-market, for the Maison’s clients and for external partners.

To learn more about our current transactions or our approach, please reach out to your Côme Maison of Finance contact.

This note does not constitute investment advice.